The Squeaky Wheel Gets the Grease? What is the Secret of Those Tea-baggers Anyway?

Laura from We Move to Canada brings up a valid argument in her post today.

If the tea-partiers are so opposed to government spending, why aren’t they protesting the two occupations the US is funding to the tune of at least $880 billion and as much as $1.03 trillion, this year alone?

However, I don’t think it’s just because there is a black man in the white house. It doesn’t help, but it isn’t the whole reason. One only has to remember when Hilary Clinton tried to pass health care reform when her husband was president. That pretty much fell as fast as it was drafted.  The difference this time around is that this administration has come the closest to passing health care reform, as watered down as it is. Although, I have to say that  these tea-baggers are nothing if not, shall we say,  proudly disfunctional?

They are pathetic and largely in part, uneducated and yet they’re going in so far as to pick candidates to run in elections for GOP and such, they are making the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck millions they probably wouldn’t make if not for them.  They are  essentially getting See Sawah run noticed by the same GOP who blamed her for McCain’s loss in 2008. At the end of the day, after one looks at this sad group, they are still left with nothing, but they continue to get the most media coverage. Arguably media coverage and whether or not it’s positive or negative,  is largely the reason a movement would be successful or not.

After reading  this afternoon’s Think Progress: the Tea-bagger hit parade in all their glory, outrageousness and misspelled signs protesting the health care Reform vote are getting far more attention than a larger anti-war protest in the same town today.

They engage in such behavior that would get anyone or any group arrested or at the very least, denounced, that some Rethuglicans are defending these tea-baggers.

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) came to the defense of the racists and bigots who shouted slurs at members of Congress Saturday. The Tea Party protesters shouted the ‘n’ word at African American members of Congress the ‘f’ word at an openly gay member.

Rather than condemn the anachronistic behavior, Nunes blamed the Democrats, saying that they make people do and say crazy things with their tyrannical behavior.

“When you use a totalitarian tactics, people, you know, begin to act crazy,” Nunes told C-SPAN’s Steve Scully Sunday morning when asked about the slurs. “I think that people have every right to say what they want. If they want to smear someone they can do it. It’s not appropriate–I think I would stop short of characterizing the 20,000 people protesting, that all of them were doing that.”

When one asks why Rethuglicans go as far as to suck up to these ignorant, uneducated fools, one only has to look at what happens to politicians who are considered not ‘conservative’ enough (name Dede Scozzafava ring any bells?).

Today, there are only about 1,500 – 2,000 tea-baggers out protesting health care reform who are receiving far more attention than about 2,500 demonstrators protesting the 7th anniversaries of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan yesterday. Why do these tea-baggers get more attention than the war protesters?

Think Progress did some research and found that between March 19 and March 21, the tea-baggers were covered 31 times while the anti-war demonstrators were only covered twice by the major media oufits.

More importantly, how come bad behavior; behavior that can potentially hurt the public is condoned more than similar behavior from the war protesters?  And I’m talking security breach time; not just the general obnoxious behavior Rep Nunes seems to be praising.

A protester sitting in the House gallery just disrupted the early business going on in the chamber by screaming out: “The people have said no!” and “You took an oath.” Leadership tried to gavel the members back into session and ordered the Sargent in Arms to remove the unruly man. Before he was escorted out, however, he did receive a fair amount of applause from the Republican side of the aisle.

We already know that anybody else from any other group protesting something else, especially against such things as climate change or wars would not only have been condemned for less, but they get arrested.   There were eight people arrested at yesterday’s anti-war protests in Washington D.C. yesterday for simply lying down on a sidewalk in front of the White House where it all ended.  Imagine that,  anti-war protesters getting arrested for something as benign as lying down on a sidewalk but a tea-bagger for  protesting right on the house floor where business was underway for health care reform votes. Why is that?

I guess that tea-baggers with the kind of power they seem to demonstrate in the media can be a source of admiration for many.  Remember this clown from the Grope and Fail? Remember how he believed Canada was in need of a Tea-bagger movement of some kind?  However, Ibbitson was referring more to waking Canadians out of their apathy more than anything else in his article. What he failed to mention was those CAPP rallies across Canada last January. Rallies where all were well behaved for the most part  without major incident and no reported arrests. Cross Canada, these rallies had larger turn-outs on the whole than the this week-end’s tea-bagger protesting health care reform in D.C., even more than yesterday’s anti-war rallies, yet they were belittled, touted as unsuccessful with low turn-outs and yes, even lambasted and nit-picked in the MSM.

Europeans tend to take to the streets for anything their government does that can potentially harm the masses; they don’t allow their governments to get away with half our government does get away with. They come complete with rogue individuals who behave badly and get arrested.

What does make a group of protesters and/or activists successful then? I have certainly illustrated that numbers don’t play a large part of that? Is it behavior?  Does it come down to who is more entertaining (ie, who sounds so ridiculously stupid as to pass for humor or their misspelled signs with misused words and messages that give wrong info)? Or, the most likely of reasons, which group best supports the agenda of the Corporate Media and the political party they serve?

Sidenote: Here are some of the most outrageous quotes from U.S. politicians regarding health care reform. Some of them are doozies!